The Night of the Iguana @ Hubbard Hall, 3/4/12

by Michael Eck
The lizard is tied up under the veranda, scratching away at the boards above. It’s a relentless, desperate sound. T. Lawrence Shannon is tied up on the hammock, writhing against his bounds. It’s a whimpering, pathetic sound.
Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana” bears many of the playwright’s trademarks, mostly in the predicaments of its players, and to a lesser degree in the loftiness of its language.
It’s onstage now at Hubbard Hall. Let’s amend that, As is often the case, it’s on the floor at Hubbard Hall.
Theater Company at Hubbard Hall founder Kevin McGuire created the model for putting the troupe’s plays on the actual floorboards and current artistic director John Hadden — who also directs this play — is continuing the tradition.
Scenic deisgner Karen Koziol’s set makes no effort at suggesting the heat so central to the play, but that’s alright. Other productions of this piece have born the humidity like a distracting burden.
Hadden has also cast against type, and while there are skips and flaws in the production, overall it is a fresh, curious reading.
Doug Ryan is more often seen in broad comic roles, as well as philosophical but still silly situations. There is nothing silly in the standard sense about Shannon, a fallen Episcopal priest and tropical tour guide with an eye for young girls.
As the play begins, Shannon has just deflowered another follower, and his tour group — from a Baptist women’s college — is revolting against him.
One wants the character to be brooding and raging, but one doesn’t get that from Ryan. His portrayal is as much Woody Allen as Richard Burton, but it works — mostly.
He has multiple foils in the play, all of them women.
Maxine Faulk (Christine Decker) owns the Mexican hilltop hotel he plans to board his tour in; Judith Fellowes (Kim Johnson Turner) is the leader of the insurrection, a butch Baptist vocal couch with a soft spot for Shannon’s victim, Charlotte Goodall (Katherine Stevenson); and Hannah Jelkes (Stephanie Moffett Hynds), a curious quick-sketch con-woman who is just as shattered and fragile as Shannon in her own way.
If Ryan’s characterization is unexpected, so is Decker’s. She plays Faulk as more matronly than predatory. Again, it works — mostly.
Hynds’ Jelkes, though, is right on target, and far and away the best element of this production, which suffers from a weak supporting cast that reduces cameo roles to comic filler.
When Hynds recounts Jelkes sole “love life” moment to Shannon — obsessively caressing the strings of the hammock as she relates the strange, fetishistic tale — this “Iguana” explodes full-force into a Williams moment. It is here that Hadden and Hynds zero in on the darkness and light of the play.
Koziol’s chiaroscuro set almost throbs in harmony for those brief minutes.
Would that the rest of the show did so, too.